National Institutes of Health Funding and Public Access Policy

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy ensures that published results of NIH-funded research are accessible to the public.

Effective July 1, 2013, NIH moved into the enforcement stage, requiring full compliance with the policy before continuing year (type 5) funds will be released.

Final peer-reviewed manuscripts must be posted to the NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) system upon acceptance for publication and be made publicly available on PubMed Central (PMC) no later than 12 months after the official date of publication.

Here are some important points to consider:

• Awards are being withheld if there are publications not in compliance with the policy.
• Alternatively, awards have been released but restricted so no spending is allowed until publications are in compliance.
• NIH is identifying non-compliant articles during progress report submissions where the PI is instructed to identify new publications associated with the award. As a result, NIH has withheld the award funds.
• NIH has published a list of known non-compliant articles. The UF Office of Research and the UF Libraries have been reaching out to the authors of the articles to assist them in bringing these articles into compliance.

Please log in to myNCBI at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ to ensure you are in compliance or contact the UF Libraries for individual support.

NIH Policy Access Policy is available at http://publicaccess.nih.gov/.

UF resources to assist with compliance are available at http://guides.uflib.ufl.edu/nih.